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ARE YOU PREPARED TO MEET THE PRESS?

COOPERATION IS OFTEN THE BEST RESPONSE WHEN A SHOPPING CENTER FALLS UNDER MEDIA SCRUTINY, EXPERTS SAY

By Steve McLinden

Add “Media Savvy” to the list of required courses for shopping center professionals. More and more, industry specialists are realizing that to fare well in the court of public opinion, they must court that opinion through the media. This is hardly lost on Forest City Enterprises, which routinely conducts intensive, two-day media training sessions for its developers, featuring mock press conferences and reporter role-playing. “We focus a lot on preparation,” said Nancy McCann, the Cleveland-based firm’s vice president of marketing. “And our developers are surprised at the intensity of these sessions.”

Facing a real TV camera and sweating under the glare of hot lights, these developers are grilled with tough interview questions as they participate in the program created by Forest City and its public relations firm, Cleveland-based Liggett Stashower. “We try to help them focus on being cool, calm and collected under pressure,” McCann said. “In the end they come away feeling more comfortable and positive about dealing with the media and conveying their message.”

Not all retail real estate firms go to such lengths, of course, but more of them are seeing media relations strategies as a good-sense policy, particularly in a crisis. “You don’t have to communicate all the time, but you have to communicate, and communicate well, when it matters,” said David Silver, president of Silver Communications and author of the forthcoming book, Managing Corporate Communications in the Age of Restructuring, Crisis and Litigation. Companies need to do more than issue a few dry press releases, says Silver. They must nurture relationships with reporters and not merely wait for those reporters to come to them. These relationships have become especially crucial in this era of instant information, he says. “You’re not just providing quotes,” he said. “You are communicating with the community and, in many cases, the world.”

One key to better publicity is understanding the various media channels, says Mark Winter, a partner at Bingham Farms, Mich.-based Identity Marketing & Public Relations, whose commercial real estate clients include The Festival Cos. and Steiner + Associates. Understanding the different editorial philosophies, sensitivities and deadlines of mainstream and trade publications is also relevant. “It’s really important to present the right information to the right audiences,” he said. “Just sending out the same press release to everyone isn’t effective.”

Winter says he has seen a huge transition away “from that old-line developer mindset of, ‘It’s my piece of dirt, and I’m going to do what I want with it.’ Developers have to play in the same sandbox with cities and other governing bodies now and be more attuned to public-private relationships to get TIF monies. Projects are also facing more regulatory hurdles today as they get bigger and more complex and take longer to build.”

Winter advises his clients to work with, and not against, communities and the media, to create a constructive communications channel. “We counsel them to return every call,” he said. “Even if you can’t talk about a certain subject, it makes absolutely no sense to avoid calls. That only creates tension between the developer and media outlet. Our message is that the reporter is still going to write the story, and they need to participate in it.”

Reporters say the same. Lois Weiss, the New York Post real estate writer who pens the popular Between the Bricks column, says a “no comment” response often serves to perpetuate misinformation. “It is better to provide totally off-the-record guidance so a reporter does not print something that is wrong and misleading to the public,” she said. “Those stories are the ones that are picked up and repeated by other media outlets. You could blame the reporter in your head, but it’s really the company’s fault.” Though public companies are often restrained from commenting on rumors or speculation, they and their PR firms can work with reporters to keep false information from getting published, she says.

Sometimes, the chance for a substantive interview is blown simply because a source is slow to return calls. “As a daily reporter, having someone call me back the following afternoon is worthless and a waste of both their time and mine,” said Weiss. “I try to give realistic deadlines, like no later than 4 p.m. for a 5 p.m. deadline, and it is frustrating to have them call at 6 p.m. or the next day. At 6 p.m. I might be able to insert a one-liner, but it never gets the prominence it might deserve.”

Sean Wood, a business writer at the San Antonio Express News who also covered real estate at the Dallas Business Journal and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, says the biggest mistake companies can make in dealing with business media is to believe that if they do not talk, nothing will get written. “In reality, any reporter worth their salt will write it anyway,” said Wood. “The thing interview subjects need to remember is that they really are in control of the interview.”

One of the biggest challenges for companies is ensuring that they are portrayed fairly in the face of damaging events, says Gene Grabowski, a former journalist who is senior vice president of Washington-based Levick Strategic Communications. Grabowski has been in the middle of several corporate crises in recent months, including some highly publicized international cases involving contaminated pet food and spinach. “During a crisis, step one is always, think like a customer,” Grabowski said. “In a crisis, we huddle our people in a room and ask, ‘What do we have to do to alleviate those fears?’ If we can get the consumer calmed down, then we can calm the media.”

Every crisis these days is a communications crisis, says Grabowski, and companies need to be prepared just in case. “A crisis plan is like the sprinkler system,” he said. “You hope you never need it, but you’re sure glad you have it if you do.” Some retailers, such as Stew Leonard’s dairy stores, will not grant a franchise unless the candidate has a crisis plan, Grabowski says.

But anyone dealing with a crisis situation must be upfront, quick and concise in communicating, says publicist Winter. “I can’t stress how important it is to come out very quickly,” he said. “Hiding, avoiding or pointing fingers in different directions are all things that can dig you in deeper. What you definitely don’t want is to let the rumor mill take over or allow the other side in the issue to frame the debate.”

During a crisis, an owner may not stop to realize what its retail properties mean to the community. “A shopping center is the hub of the community and a big part of the cultural fabric,” said Silver. “It’s where everyone shops and eats. People have come to depend on it.” Shopping centers should have a written crisis-management plan that clearly spells out responsibilities, particularly for media communication, says Winter. Ideally, a mall manager who has a rapport with the media should be the face of the property in a crisis, he says.

Edgewater Mall, in Biloxi, Miss., flooded by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, is a case in point. Well before the hurricane struck, Terry Powell, the mall’s general manager, had already built relationships with members of local media. After the storm Edgewater’s plight had the rapt attention of those media representatives, who became very receptive to publicizing updates and reopening timelines, says Powell. “Through them we were able to let people know we were going to come back,” Powell said.

History has shown that the mightiest companies in any industry can fall, and fall hard, Silver says. “Every 10 years or so, there is a major crisis on Wall Street that wakes up the corporate community,” said Silver. “Arthur Andersen was the tops in its field, everyone wanted that to be on their résumé, and now it is out of business. And a large part of that is because they didn’t know how to handle crisis communications.”